Abel Bonnard

Abel Jean Désiré Bonnard (; 19 December 1883 31 May 1968) was a French poet, novelist and politician. One of the ministers of National Education under the Vichy regime, he was tried and convicted for collaborating with Nazi Germany.

Biography Born in Poitiers, Vienne, his early education was in Marseille with secondary studies at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris. A student of literature, he was a graduate of the École du Louvre.

Politically, a follower of Charles Maurras, his views evolved towards fascism in the 1930s. Bonnard was one of the ministers of National Education under the Vichy regime (1942–44). The political satirist Jean Galtier-Boissière gave him the nickname "la Gestapette," a portmanteau of Gestapo and tapette, the latter a pejorative French slang term for homosexual. The name, along with the homosexual inclinations it implied, became well known. He was a member of the committee of the Groupe Collaboration, an organisation that aimed to encourage closer cultural ties between France and Germany.

Bonnard was one of four members expelled from the Académie française after World War II for collaboration with Germany. Bonnard was condemned in absentia to death during the épuration légale period for wartime activities. However, he had escaped to Spain where Francisco Franco granted him political asylum.

In 1960, he returned to France to face retrial for his crimes. Bonnard received a symbolic sentence of 10 years banishment to be counted from 1945, but dissatisfied with the verdict, he chose to return to Spain where he lived out the remainder of his life.